LinkedIn India crosses 50 million

Network’s local membership surges; firm to develop more products in Bengaluru

LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with more than 562 million members globally, announced that it has crossed the 50-million member mark in India.

As LinkedIn’s fastest-growing and largest market outside the U.S., India has seen the member base grow from 3.4 million in November 2009 to 50 million now, said the company. The India member base has doubled in the past four years.

LinkedIn said these 50 million members represent a diverse cross-section of industries such as information technology, financial services, education, automotive and telecommunications.

Some of the top companies included Flipkart, Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Directi and One97 Communications.

A statement said that among the top skills showcased in member profiles are ‘Microsoft Word’, ‘SQL’, ‘management’ and ‘project management’ and ‘leadership’.

LinkedIn said its ‘Made in India’ journey began with the unveiling of the lightweight mobile website in September 2016, followed by the launch of ‘LinkedIn Lite’ Android app in July 2017.

A lightweight version of the flagship app, the ‘lite’ app was built to provide opportunities to professionals in low connectivity areas and level the playing field for job-seekers across locations.

‘Global products’

Developed by LinkedIn’s R&D centre in Bengaluru, the first one outside Mountain View, LinkedIn said that ‘Lite’ had witnessed unprecedented global success and its story is “symbolic of the big bets that the firm is taking to build global products out of India.”

The firm said it is bolstering its efforts in the country to innovate in local solutions that can also be scaled and exported. Less than a year after launching in India, Lite has scaled to over 135 countries and supports more than 20 languages, the statement said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Daily Report and is published from a The Hindu.)